It seems crazy. It seems as though it could not have happened ever, or if it did, it must have occurred a thousand years ago or on another planet.

But only 50 years ago in East Lansing, MI, two college basketball teams met in a Mideast Regional NCAA Tournament game and history was created in a most stunning—some would say, incomprehensibly symbolic, even banal and baffling way: an all-white team, Mississippi State, risked life and soul to play a mixed-race team, Loyola of Chicago, for the first time in Mississippi state history.

Just a half century ago, an unwritten but zealously adhered to state law said that no Mississippi university basketball team could compete against a team that had an African-American on it. Just would not play. Never. Wouldn’t schedule such a game. Wouldn’t show up if it occurred. And if folks thought this was a joke, they could contact the Ku Klux Klan, which was willing to burn crosses, terrorize and kill to prevent the mixing of races in anything other than relationships resembling Jim Crow subservience.

This was 1963 America. I was 14. I was sheltered from the worst of racial conflict because I lived in the rural North, and I was white. But I heard the hum of it, felt the flames. As a child I went down South to visit my grandparents in coastal Georgia. I had seen the “Whites Only” drinking fountains and restrooms, and had been scared by the knowledge that the world was not what I thought it was.

The now-legendary “Game of Change” occurred the way all breaks with evil history occur, through courage, defiance, desire and, yes, a tad bit of “We just want to play!” The Mississippi State president, a brave man named Dean Colvard, slipped out of the state—not even telling his wife where he was going—so he could not be served an injunction by Mississippi lawmen trying to prevent the Southeast Conference champion Bulldogs from heading North. Coach Babe McCarthy, with assistant Wade Walker, slipped out to Nashville soon after. There, the small plane carrying the team’s players—who had also made an FBI-like exit from Starkville—touched down to pick up the men and continue on to the Tourney.

As I stood on a recent evening in a Loyola hall, leading a discussion between almost all the surviving players, coaches, and managers from both sides in that Game of Change, I was suddenly overwhelmed thinking about the handshake, seen in the photo above, before the opening tip, between MSU’s Stan Brinker and Loyola’s Vic Rouse, who would help his team to the NCAA Championship that season.

Yes, it was simple. No, it was not easy. In the half-century celebration game that took place between MSU and Loyola on December 14, it was amusing to see Mississippi State have as many as five black players on the floor at one time, under a black head coach, Rick Ray.

But here are the old players now, all of them friends, black and white, still tall and funny and competitive.

“Really, we just wanted to play basketball,” says MSU’s Bobby Shows.

“We were concerned,” remembers Loyola All-American Jerry Harkness. “We got threatening letters from the Klan. And then black people in Chicago said, ‘You better not LOSE!'”

The game was beautiful. Loyola won, 61-51. It was clean and tough and respectful. And 50 seasons later, we’d be fools to forget it.

On this week’s edition of Real Sports, which premieres tomorrow at 10 p.m. ET/PT and will replay all month, Bryant Gumbel takes us back to the wonder of the 1972 draft, LaRue Martin. Not exactly the biggest wonder in terms of glamour, but in terms of being a mystery.

Martin is in elite company with the likes of Shaq, David Robinson, LeBron James, Magic Johnson and every other No. 1 pick in history, but his NBA career was the least impressive of all of these players. Martin is actually often called the biggest bust in NBA history, and rightfully so.

In this segment of Real Sports, Bryant Gumbel highlights the wonderful career of Martin—not as a basketball player but as a human being.

This segment is a perfect way to show that there is a life after basketball for all NBA players, and all professional basketball players.

Gumbel introduces us to several different people whom were familiar with LaRue at some capacity, including himself, who attended the same high school with Martin.

Gumbel gives us a feel for who Martin the person is. Not the basketball player.

A Chicago native, Martin was humble to the point that he was shy. Martin was even captured in a high school photograph (which is shown on the episode) of the basketball team, being the biggest guy but standing off to the side, not even facing the camera.

This shyness stayed with him as he enrolled at Loyola University in Chicago, a very small school in his native city.

When he was drafted first overall by the Portland Trail Blazers, it brought shock waves to the whole country, even to himself, who said that even he didn’t believe he was going to be drafted.

Martin didn’t produce. The media took him apart. Martin, the reserved kid who couldn’t smile for a camera in high school was now thrown under a national spotlight, and as you would imagine, it didn’t work out very well.

After four sub-par NBA seasons for any player, let alone a former first overall pick in the NBA draft, Martin was traded to the Seattle SuperSonics. He was soon waived by the Sonics, which concluded his NBA career.

Martin, who would often come home crying about criticism, soon became an alcoholic. Martin was already in bad shape when 1977 came, but when the Portland Trail Blazers hoisted the championship trophy that year, his heart completely dropped. The sight of his former team winning with a new franchise player at his position (the great Bill Walton) was too much for Martin to handle.

This is why Martin separates himself from basketball so much today, because he only has bad memories associated with the sport.

Though he was heart-broken to say the least and had developed a drinking problem, Martin picked himself up and became the great man he is today. How he picked himself up is the sweetest part of the whole segment.

Gumbel really highlights how Martin was able to become a powerful executive after his early post-playing struggles.

The way Martin got to his rank as an executive at UPS was by first taking a job as a truck driver, a job he took because he was able to ride down country roads and finally be at peace for the first time in years.

Martin began to rise through the ranks and his great attitude, hard work, and humbleness landed him a job that he loves in his hometown.

LaRue Martin says to Bryant Gumbel, “I made it.” He didn’t make it as a basketball player, but he made sure that he would make it as a person. That statement he made goes to everyone who criticized and critiqued him during his life, he made it.

It is a great story of a man who breaks the pattern of the many players who have their lives ruined by alcohol, media criticism, or drugs.

LaRue Martin should serve as an example for all athletes who face extreme adversity at the professional level to not become the bankrupt former ball player, but to pick yourself up and “make it.” Definitely watch this episode of Real Sports to see this lesson come to life.